Aircraft fuselages are traditionally embodied in a metallic form of construction with a backing structure of a multiplicity of longitudinal and circumferential stiffeners. While the manufacture of such aircraft fuselages is indeed very easy to control, the aircraft fuselages, by virtue of the metallic materials, have a relatively high weight. In addition to the high weight of the metallic aircraft fuselages the high number of parts of the longitudinal stiffeners and their attachment, or integration, are particularly labour-intensive. In recent times, therefore, a growing trend towards the replacement of the metallic fuselages with fuselages of fibre-reinforced composite materials can be observed. Here the fuselages and their backing structures are usually copies of metallic fuselages. This means that longitudinal stiffeners accommodate the longitudinal loads, circumferential stiffeners accommodate the circumferential loads and moments, while the skin primarily accommodates the internal pressure and also longitudinal and shear loads.
In addition attempts are being made, as shown for example in U.S. 2007/0108347 A1 to replace the conventional arrangement of the longitudinal and circumferential stiffeners by an integral stiffening structure in the form of a lattice, in which a multiplicity of stiffeners located in one plane, and aligned at an angle to the longitudinal axis of the fuselage, are joined in crossing regions. However, what is problematical in the composite form of construction with the lattice-type backing structure is the large number of stiffeners and their joining in the crossing regions, which requires complex production devices. Furthermore the lattice-type backing structure is not optimally designed for the loads that occur, but represents somewhat of a compromise in terms of accommodating all the loads to be anticipated.